A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of love.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Accursed who brings to light of day the writings I have cast away.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

An intellectual hatred is the worst.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

And say my glory was I had such friends.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Cast your mind on other days that we in coming days may be still the indomitable Irishry.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Choose your companions from the best; Who draws a bucket with the rest soon topples down the hill.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

How can we know the dancer from the dance?
- William Butler Yeats Quote

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood - sex and the dead.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.'
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

In dreams begins responsibility.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Man can embody truth bet he cannot know it.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Think where mans glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die.
- William Butler Yeats Quote

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.
- William Butler Yeats Quote